It’s time to talk about the future of Better Naito.(Photo: Jonathan Maus)

“The Mayor wants one of these options to move forward [and] is interested in Option B.” — Michael Cox, Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Communications for Mayor Ted Wheeler

Now in its fourth year as a seasonal street oasis for vulnerable road users, the talks about making Better Naito permanent are heating up.

This past winter, the Portland Bureau of Transportation commissioned a private consulting firm to develop a report (below) with conceptual designs for a capital project that would replace the temporary plastic delineator wands and paint striping that exist today on Naito Parkway’s northbound lanes from SW Main to NW Couch with a permanent, 20-foot wide path for bicycling, walking, and other uses.

This is the first time the report has been made public. We received a copy of it from Mayor Ted Wheeler’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Communications Michael Cox after hearing about from various sources. Here’s the report:

The report was completed by David Evans and Associates (DEA) in late February and it offers three options with detailed cost estimates for each one. The three options outline ways to fit a 20-foot wide path for walking/rolling (eight feet) and two-way biking (12 feet) along northbound Naito Parkway. The current configuration is 16-feet wide and uses space of the bike lane (five feet) and one standard vehicle lane (11-feet).

Cost estimates range from $3.4 million to $5.3 million.

Here are the options in more detail:

Option A places the cycle track and sidewalk behind the existing curb to minimize impacts to traffic on SW Naito Pkwy. This maintains both northbound auto lanes, but has the greatest impact on Waterfront Park. ($5.3 million)

Option B balances Options A and C by retaining 2 northbound auto lanes south of SW Morrison St, but removing 1 lane to the north. This balances the competing needs to maintain traffic and avoid impacts to Waterfront Park. ($3.9 million)

Option C removes 1 northbound auto lane and places the cycle track and sidewalk adjacent to the roadway to minimize impacts to Waterfront Park. This retains the maximum number of trees and park area, but does not address stakeholder concerns about queuing or travel time delays. ($3.4 million)

And here’s a comparison of costs and other elements:

The three options.(Graphic: David Evans and Associates)

Inherent in all these options seems to be a reluctance to significantly impact driving. We see phrases like, “to minimize impacts to traffic,” “balances the competing needs to maintain traffic” and “stakeholder concerns about… travel time delays.” Also note the intention to maintain two standard vehicle lanes all the way to Morrison, a major connection to the I-5 freeway. Option A and B retain the two lanes that exist today.

Current cross-section of Naito.(Graphic: David Evans and Associates, Tex: BikePortland)

The focus to “maintain traffic” on Naito is also interesting because PBOT themselves has pushed the narrative that Better Naito causes very minimal delays for drivers. Their analysis (detailed in the 2017 Better Naito report) shows that the reconfiguration of lanes results in about a 90-second increase in driving times during peak hours. The extra space for cycling and walking (a.k.a. traffic) also attracts more — and safer, healthier, cleaner, and more efficient — non-motorized trips. Last year PBOT counted more than 12,000 people walking on Better Naito in just one day during the Waterfront Blues Festival. During the five-month period it was installed in 2017, there were 393,173 one-way trips by people bicycling.

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“The position of Better Block is for PBOT to take the current seasonal configuration and make the minimal improvements needed to keep it up year-round, instead of spending millions on a full capital rebuild of Naito Parkway.”— Better Block PDX

Related and also noteworthy is that each option currently on the table requires right-of-way acquisition from Waterfront Park — including tree removals. The options range from taking nearly an acre (42,000 feet) and 40 trees out of the park in Option A, to five tree removals and 1,000 square feet in Option C. This section of Naito is very wide at 73-feet from curb-to-curb. It’s not clear why none of the options solely uses the existing roadway. A “bike project” that takes any trees and/or space away from Waterfront Park could be a public relations catastrophe not just for Mayor Wheeler and PBOT, but for cycling in general.

I asked Michael Cox from Wheeler’s office about this potential for opposition to park impacts. “This question will obviously feature as part of our outreach strategy and we will listen to concerns raised,” he replied via email this morning. Asked why there wasn’t a “no parks impact” option in the report, Cox said, “We’re looking at all the options, and Option C is in some ways similar to the seasonal configuration. The strategy outlined in the report, based on our request, is how to make it permanent.”

If one of these proposals moves forward and the City prepares to cut into the park, they’d be smart to refer to the 2003 Waterfront Park Master Plan which envisioned, “a new sidewalk along Naito Parkway will be 6–8′ wide through the full length of the park.”

Cox says while the Mayor has signaled a desire to move forward, he hasn’t made any final decisions. “The Mayor wants one of these options to move forward [and] is interested in Option B; but has asked PBOT to do additional outreach work with the neighboring community and ensure the engineering is sound and the cost estimates are accurate or refined.”

Consultants hired by the City of Portland say proposals for Naito through Waterfront Park would be similar to what they’re currently building between SW Harrison and Jefferson.(Image: PBOT video still)

Better Block PDX, the group that piloted Better Naito in 2015 and then handed it over to PBOT in 2017, does not think it’s necessary to impact Waterfront Park. In a statement provided to BikePortland in late March (before this report was available), the group said, “Because we have such limited funds and resources as a City and some areas of town face huge hurdles just having basic safe streets, the position of Better Block is for PBOT to take the current seasonal configuration and make the minimal improvements needed to keep it up year-round, instead of spending millions on a full capital rebuild of Naito Parkway.”

The City of Portland was not in contact with Better Block PDX during the development of the DEA report.

We confirmed this morning that Better Block reached out to the Mayor’s office and Cox said, “We will engage them on the issue.” As for the Portland Business Alliance (who haven’t responded to our request for comment), Cox said they were sent a copy of the report just this week.

If this issue heats up soon, Wheeler could find himself in a powerful position. Not only does Wheeler still control of all the bureaus (he takes them during budget talks and hasn’t doled them back out yet); but both Parks and Transportation are without directors at the moment. Parks Director Mike Abbaté and PBOT Director Leah Treat have both resigned in recent weeks.

The next step in Better Naito’s future is a public outreach process. As we reported earlier this month, PBOT sees the opportunity to update Naito through the Central City in Motion project. The first chance to weigh in on these three options for a permanent Better Naito will be on June 4th when the City launches an online open house for that project.

CORRECTION, 1:57 pm: PBOT analysis shows a 90-second increase in driving times during the Better Naito installation, not a reduction, as I initially wrote. That was a typo/mistake and I regret any confusion it might have caused.)

UPDATE, 5:50 pm: Sandra McDonough, president and CEO of the Portland Business Alliance, has responded to our request for comment.

“The Alliance has long supported transportation solutions that ensure safe mobility for vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians throughout the city. Naito Parkway is a location that must balance the needs of each of these modes; we are encouraged that the city has developed options to provide a permanent bike path in a portion of the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. This option appears to best accommodate all modes, and ensure the needs of all transportation system users are met by minimizing vehicle congestion and providing a truly protected bike path that will complement the planned bike path south of the Hawthorne Bridge. This proposal has the potential to be a win-win solution, and we look forward to continuing to work with the city and other stakeholders on a permanent plan that provides safety, accessibility and mobility for those who walk, ride and drive.”

NOTE: We love your comments and work hard to ensure they are productive, considerate, and welcoming of all perspectives. Disagreements are encouraged, but only if done with tact and respect. If you see a mean or inappropriate comment, please contact us and we'll take a look at it right away. Also, if you comment frequently, please consider holding your thoughts so that others can step forward. Thank you — Jonathan

64 Comments

9wattsMay 24, 2018 at 12:40 pm

Perhaps we can think of this as a blueprint for how we’ll proceed with taking back our streets as automobility dries up and blows away. Or, put another way, subsequent efforts can’t but be cheaper and simpler now that we’ve seen how a city whose imagination has been captured by fossil fuels approaches a problem like this.

Unfortunately, cars are not going away nor their use drying-up. Just look at the car commercials on TV and those on the Portland roads. Traffic has done nothing but get worse over the years despite all the bike infrastructure and “pushes” to get people to not use cars. People are not moving here without cars. The better naito seems to work just fine seasonally. Waterfront is not heavily used outside the summer season and there is plenty of room for people to bike and walk along the waterfront using the sidewalk area closest to the water. No need to unnecessarily impede the flow of traffic during the off-season.

Car commercials would be the last place on earth I’d look for evidence that automobility is doomed. Even car buying habits or use are not good places to look. Collective denial can and does take many forms.

We moved here without a car because we thought Portland was one of a very few American cities where that’d be possible. It’s working so far. In any case, it’s good to see a car fan reading Bike Portland.

Peoples desires to own and operate cars and peoples financial ability to do the same are two different things in the modern world. Auto sales in the last few years have been kept alive through the use of subprime auto loans, which are now defaulting at rate the exceeds the 2008-2009 recession. Oil production has only been kept alive with cheap money doled out by the fed to frackers. The domestic oil industry is now in debt by more than 289 billion $ more than at the begining of the decade and even Exxon is borrowing to pay dividends. I expect we will see a new wave of high fuel prices come on by the middle of summer and easy financing in the auto industry drying up. More and more Americans will not be able to afford the expense of happy motoring, so it will enter a period of permanent decline. And Elon’s model 3 ( which Tesla has decided must now cost $75,000 to keep the company afloat) will not be its salvation.

“There are especially not going to go away until there is an alternative.”

A common misunderstanding that derives from, among other things, our longstanding role in the world as bully. We have gotten used to calling the shots, throwing our weight around, demanding satisfaction. But our ability to do this is coming to an end. Sometimes we don’t get our way. As Bill McKibben has famously noted, you don’t negotiate with physics. We won’t see automobility dry up and blow away because we have lost interest, or endorse this course, but because it is out of our hands. Constraints aren’t things we invite but things that happen anyway.

Yes, having enough energy available for the average American to travel around inside a 4000 lb block of steel, glass, rubber and plastic at a whim was a one time fluke of geologically stored hydrocarbons. It will soon be going away as we suck the last of the economically obtainable petroleum from the earths crust, our atmosphere goes on strike and the rest of the world stops accepting our funny money in exchange for valuable resources. Planning on driving down to the quickie mart in a motorized living room on wheels is not an adaptive strategy that will be successful in the year 2030.

Going back to 1977, the last 3 years (2015 thru 2017) are the highest consecutive years of auto sales, exceeding 17 million sold per year. Compare that to the early 1980’s when around 10 million cars were sold. It doesn’t have anything to do with bikes, buses, trains, none of that matters. When the economy is strong people will choose driving a car as their preference, and strong economies will allow people the means to buy cars. If a monumental long term shift was going to happen, it would’ve been 2008-10 during the financial crisis when car sales dropped to 10-13 million per year, but sales returned and set records when the economy bounced back.

Another factor is we’re in an aging society, the older the population, the fewer individuals able to ride a bike as viable transportation. Also, biking is still not a viable option and may never be for suburban dwellers in areas like Hillsboro, Gresham, Wilsonville, Camas, etc. where people are being pushed for lower home prices, better schools, and lower property taxes.

Stats from://www.statista.com

And really, they had to hire a consultant (always seems like David Evans) to come up with these three obvious options?

“If a monumental long term shift was going to happen, it would’ve been 2008-10 during the financial crisis when car sales dropped to 10-13 million per year, but sales returned and set records when the economy bounced back. ”

Why would you suggest history can only proceed within such narrow parameters? The Financial Crisis of 2008 was a constraint, and looming global climate catastrophe is another. Just because the dent in car sales observed during the one (past) constraint didn’t lead to the permanent decline says nothing whatsoever about the prospects of the second (ongoing) constraint’s ability to bring this about.

If, or when, cars go away, or morph into something else, is a matter of pure speculation. The rise of self-driving cars is far more certain, and even that involves a huge amount of uncertainty as to the time frame and extent of the change.

No rational city planner is going to spend much time on the matter now.

The waterfront is one of the most highly visited areas in Portland by both locals and tourists. Its weird to have Naito remain a daunting freeway discouraging foot traffic between waterfront park and downtown businesses.

Thanks, Jonathan, for your diligent reporting on this and all the other recent developments regarding bike infrastructure, or lack thereof, in Portland. I have no idea how I’d learn about all this stuff otherwise.

Whatever solution is chosen, even if this stays temporary, the practice of using this space as a loading zone needs to stop. It is mind boggling how people in cars and trucks seem to have no problem parking or driving in a bike lane. Legal protections don’t matter if they’re not enforced through policy, policing, and infrastructure.

Also why is there a lane dedicated to storing vehicles on Naito? Couldn’t that space be better utilized by having anything else there?

I would like to see the traffic impacts (how much time does each option “cost” a driver) alongside the price tag for each option. That way we could compare cost vs. benefit and decide what the best approach is. For example: Is it worth $3M to save a typical driver 7 seconds during a 2 hour window each day?

What happens to the southbound bike lane that’s currently there? Are these options based on the assumption that it will remain? What about the parking lane for that matter? Those two lanes occupies 13 ft…so I’m just wondering. It’d be a shame to take land away from the park when there’s already such a wide street.

The southbound lanes are not useful in lane-reallocation conversations. The very solidly-built median prevents the city from taking space from southbound lanes to give to northbound lanes. PBOT is also not interested in building protected lanes southbound, on account of the high auto turning volumes. It sounds like they’re leaving the existing door-zone lane for those who want to use it, but otherwise there’s no conversation to change the southbound side of Naito.

why not use the existing southbound bike lane and parking to put all auto traffic in one lane each way on the southbound side? if there’s great bike and ped space in the east lanes, there doesn’t seem to be a need for that existing southbound bike lane.

I realize this idea wouldn’t fly for the usual can’t-rock-the-motorist-boat reasons, but it sure seems like a better option. lease some space for sidewalk cafes &c to recoup some of that exorbitant cost.

UPDATE, 5:50 pm: Sandra McDonough, president and CEO of the Portland Business Alliance, has responded to our request for comment.

“The Alliance has long supported transportation solutions that ensure safe mobility for vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians throughout the city. Naito Parkway is a location that must balance the needs of each of these modes; we are encouraged that the city has developed options to provide a permanent bike path in a portion of the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. This option appears to best accommodate all modes, and ensure the needs of all transportation system users are met by minimizing vehicle congestion and providing a truly protected bike path that will complement the planned bike path south of the Hawthorne Bridge. This proposal has the potential to be a win-win solution, and we look forward to continuing to work with the city and other stakeholders on a permanent plan that provides safety, accessibility and mobility for those who walk, ride and drive.”

It will be fun to use the PBA’s position in a direct outreach campaign to encourage their members not to renew. A few phone calls from interested citizens to member companies, and I’m sure they’d rethink their participation. Here is the member directory: https://business.portlandalliance.com/list/

It’s also worth noting that if PBOT/Wheeler decide to use Waterfront Park they’d also be taking space away from the Festivals. The Rose Fest, Blues Fest, City Fair and all the summer events use every possible inch of the park and I doubt they’ll be happy to give any of it up to a path.

I had the same thought about impact to events, and how big of stakeholders they are, otherwise the rest of the year the grass areas are very underutilized, with seemingly 90% of park users swarming like ants along the seawall walk. For as little general use they get I’m totally fine with either of the in-park alignments. After all why is the debate park space OR path? The path would be an entirely new asset TO the park!

I’d even rather each side of the bike lane be 8 feet wide, so 24′ in total and then make the seawall pedestrian only. Any trees lost should be replaced with new trees along the delineation between Naito and the path to eventually restore the canopy and provide a sound and pollution buffer. And if it passes the “world-class” test I don’t even care if PBA does like it.

The city also makes income from this square footage. My quick read of the memo did not indicate how much revenue is at stake, but we should try to find out. (Did the consultants not look this up or just didnt publicly release it?) There will be a permanent, ongoing cost to this project after the construction is done because of the loss of revenue.

They never built the sidewalks at the park on the east side of Naito. So the festival fences ignore PBOT’s right of way mentioned in the report and always go right up to the curb. So all the pedestrians (festival goers) are forced out into the bike lane.

This is why we needed Better Naito. {The bikes were getting pushed out into vehicle traffic by the pedestrians anyway}. But Better Naito never fully resolved the original problem: We need to build the sidewalk.

Once the sidewalk is built and protected from the festival fences, then the entire issue about a two way bicycle track becomes a different conversation.

Maybe instead of two eleven foot wide freeway-style motor vehicle lanes and a sub-standard five foot bike lane, we could re-stripe them, and have two 9.5 foot wide motor vehicle lanes and a more civilized 8 foot wide bike lane. Maybe the 8 foot wide bike lane would really be 6.5 feet of lane and 1.5 feet of “buffer”. I don’t know. There’s lots of ways to divvy it up. But we don’t have to blow 3.5 million on decent infrastructure and we don’t have to rip out a bunch of trees.

If the bike lanes were decent, and if there is a sidewalk, maybe we don’t need this cycle track (even though it looks like it would be kind of cool).

bikeninja Peoples desires to own and operate cars and peoples financial ability to do the same are two different things in the modern world. Auto sales in the last few years have been kept alive through the use of subprime auto loans, which are now defaulting at rate the exceeds the 2008-2009 recession. Oil production has only been kept alive with cheap money doled out by the fed to frackers. The domestic oil industry is now in debt by more than 289 billion $ more than at the begining of the decade and even Exxon is borrowing to pay dividends. I expect we will see a new wave of high fuel prices come on by the middle of summer and easy financing in the auto industry drying up. More and more Americans will not be able to afford the expense of happy motoring, so it will enter a period of permanent decline. And Elon’s model 3 ( which Tesla has decided must now cost $75,000 to keep the company afloat) will not be its salvation.Recommended 5

Right after peak oil, right? Oh, we were assuredly going to be paying $10/gallon.

This is the opportunity to make a bold statement. Do it right the first time and we can have something that really puts Portland back on top of the cycling infrastructure pyramid. With this, the addition south of Jefferson would make it 4 miles of protected bike lanes. Throw in the 7th street bridge crossing, green loop, bridge over the 405, and a few other projects will really protect our platinum rating.

I first heard about this on Monday when BikeLoud was updated on the CCIM plan. Since then a few friends have been “Catie why do you look so weepy today?” and I reply with “they’re going to cut down the trees in the park…” and I have been stunned by the responses. People who I have never gotten to come out for a single protest or memorial ride are asking how to send their feedback to city council and when to testify. The waterfront park is not space that the PBA and bike advocates can negotiate alone. The park belongs to everyone.

Here’s what is likely to happen: The pushback on using Waterfront Park space becomes so intense that by the time the online Open House (and any other activism that might occur.. wink/wink) is over, PBOT and Mayor Wheeler will have the political cover they need to get a spine and stand up to the PBA and then they will draft a plan to make the existing configuration permanent (without impacting the park) and say, “This new proposal is based on feedback from our open house.”

I am hoping that the public conversation about this road space reaffirms what is in our current policies and our aspirations as a city. If people from all modes come together and say “get over it, we will not compromise public space for small vehicle delays” that could set the stage of support for other arterial conversions in the future.

Right now I still feel woefully disappointed by everyone involved in this study.

Why can’t PBOT ever make a bold decision by themselves? They hold open houses for $100,000 diverter projects which brings unnecessary hysteria out of the woodwork. Just do the damn thing as a trial period and THEN host the open house when people actually experience the (positive) change. PBOT has no idea how to do PR, and they’re in compete denial of that.

Build for the future not the past. When/where will we have the opportunity to testify in front of city council about this? Waterfront park used to be concrete, now it is one of the biggest green spaces in city, and it is well used! We should oppose adding concrete back to it.

As another reader pointed out, why not take away parking from Naito? Main to Ash (minus a block) appears to have full on-street parking. Taking the ROW from parking seems like a no brainer. 1. Saves trees 2. Makes street more crossable 3. Saves green space 4. gives more room for all traffic.

City Council meets every Wednesday at 9:30am, anyone can sign up for three minutes to testify about anything (within reason is my understanding). So no need to wait for this to be on the agenda, at that point it might be too late anyway.

Removing land from a park that was once a freeway in order to maintain auto access goes against the spirit of Portland. I would like to see if there are operational improvements that could be made (i.e. signal timing) in order to provide a reduction in auto delay with just one auto lane NB

I’ve driven north on Naito a lot at rush hour. The car bottleneck is always at the Hawthorne Bridge. Once past that, the traffic dies down a lot. Really no need for two car lanes on this stretch between Hawthorne and Steel.

Why are the southbound lanes sacred in this discussion? Seems to me if Morrison access is critical, just go one northbound lane to the north, and one southbound lane to the south thereof.

Of course that’s a “keep the drivers as happy as possible” approach. If it were up to me I’d just close the stupid Harbor Drive offramp to Naito. It’d cut the northbound traffic significantly, and the remaining cars could easily get where they want in the one northbound lane.